You wait your feelings out

What this means

The part of emotion regulation that stands out in your answers is the toolkit: whether anything you do brings a feeling down. When you are upset, you tend to wait for it to wear off, because nothing you have tried makes much difference. Looking at the situation from another angle does not come easily, and you may need someone else to calm you down because nothing you do on your own helps.

Your feelings may not be unusually big, and they may not spill over. The difficulty is that once a feeling arrives, it runs its full course, because you have few ways of changing it. Waiting it out does work in the end. It is just slow, and it leaves you at the mercy of whatever comes up.

This is very often a learned gap rather than a lack of ability. Many people grew up in homes where feelings were ignored, punished or handled for them, and nobody showed them what to do with a feeling except wait or hide it. The tools other people take for granted were never handed over. They can still be learned.

What it costs

Waiting means a bad hour stays a bad hour. Relying on another person to calm you can strain relationships, especially if that person is not always available, and it can leave you anxious when they are not. Having few tools can also make strong feelings frightening, because there is no way out of them except time.

What to do next

Build a small toolkit, and practice it when you are calm. Three kinds of tools cover most situations.

A body tool, such as a long slow out-breath, a brisk walk or cold water on your face, lowers the physical charge.

A thinking tool means looking at what happened from another angle: what else could explain it, how a friend would see it, whether it will matter in a month. It often feels forced at first. That is normal.

An action tool is one small thing that moves the situation, such as sending the message, making the call or writing the plan.

Try one tool of each kind on small upsets first. Tools practiced on small things are there when bigger things arrive.

Keep people in the toolkit, but not as the only tool. Talking to someone is one of the best ways to come down. It works best as one option among several.

If you want somewhere to try the thinking tool out loud, Lovon can help you look at a situation from more than one side.